Wednesday 04/09/2025

Did the laundry. In between loads, I wrote a long email to Patty and Bert about the 11th floor that we are planning for. I was busy all morning and I can’t remember on what. Emailing back and forth setting up a date with Joanne for Saturday was the least of it. Started work on editing a video from the book talk last Monday.

The 6th floor monthly meeting was at 4:30. Elvyra, the new COO, visited. Various issues were discussed, like, housekeeping isn’t keeping our laundry room and other common spaces as clean as they used to.

At 7:00 I went to the auditorium where David M was setting up to run an event, and the Zoom Room was failing again, but in a new way. It just couldn’t see the cameras. Zoom users saw a black screen. We couldn’t resolve it. The event was Sarah Dean, the new artistic director of the Pear Theater. She had some nice slides and those went out on zoom, but no camera view of the speaker. I don’t know how many attended via zoom. There were about 50 physically in the room. The typical Zoom audience is between 10 and 20. Frankly I’m a bit tired of Zoom Room being flaky.

Tuesday 08/04/2025

For some unknown reason I had selected a 7:30am appointment time for my eye exam. Maybe that was the only slot available, I don’t remember. Anyway I zipped up to PAMF at 7am and got examined. Bottom line, the opthalmologist lady, Dessy, said my cataracts are not advanced enough to recommend surgery. She dilated me for the exam, then found out I probably wanted a new prescription, so now I have to come back for the proper exam. But she got me a slot on Thursday for that.

Then there was the writers meeting. Before and after that I pulled all the USB devices off the new desktop computer and rearranged them so there is just one USB hub. It had been a mess with three different USB hubs daisy chained, and some things weren’t showing up at all. So I got all that tidied up.

Patty insists I see the movie Ex Machina, so she is having a movie night in her room, inviting me and some others including Joanne. I’ll report on that experience later. Or not.

Monday 04/07/2025

First thing was a live event in the auditorium, the First Monday Book Talk. Speaker was resident Alice, basically giving a report on the biography of Ketanji Brown Jackson, first black female supreme court justice. Alice had an extensive set of powerpoint slides. I wanted to use Zoomroom because it gives me a good set of video recordings. However there was a stupid problem with zoomroom, which had apparently resolved itself Sunday night, but was back this morning. And our one staff IT guy had the day off. I’m not sure how I resolved this, exactly. It was in this state where Zoomroom couldn’t join the meeting for the bogus reason that “the host has another meeting in progress”. So in frustration I closed the lid of my laptop, and that seemed to clear it up, as it then joined the meeting. Opened the lid of the laptop, all was fine.

Computers. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.

Also I was going to show Alice’s powerpoint off another of my machines, but that wasn’t working well, and she suggested doing it off her machine, which I didn’t think would work but turns out, she knew PowerPoint better than I did, and it worked fine. So the event came off smoothly more despite me, than because of me.

That over, I buzzed off to FOPAL to process a couple of boxes and put my section in shape for the sale weekend. Other volunteers there were in a tizzy because, contrary to policy, somebody had accepted a huge donation, 30+ boxes of books, the weekend before the sale. So the sorting room was jammed full and… I’m sure they got it all straightened out but I did my thing and left.

First Monday of the month is also the scheduled time for the Poetry Out Loud group, headed by Joanne, although in fact she wasn’t able to be there today. But I was sort of ready having read ome Pablo Neruda poems and I picked one to read.

Sunday 04/06/2025

For fun I drove over to the Cal. ave market, where I noticed some really amazingly huge and ripe strawberries, reminding me of the ones we used to pick on Paul and Katie’s farm on San Juan Island. So I bought a basket of those.

Then to Stanford Shopping Center. I checked Nordstrom’s selection of polo shirts, meh. Then went to Neiman Marcus where I found the second most expensive polos in the galaxy. Not $1000 like at Brunello Cucinelli, no indeed, much cheaper. One polo shirt, $425. Thanks so much for your time, byeeeee.

At 2pm I met with Joanne and we went for a hike. I picked the Coyote Hills park on the other side of the bay. Lovely day, lovely time with my pal. We ate strawberries in the car after the hike. There were still some left which I took down to the dining room and shared at the community table.

Re the polo prices, Joanne said, have you checked L.L. Bean? Uh, no. So later coming back from supper I found the LLBean catalog under my door, with a paper clip on the polo page. I ordered a couple. Hopefully I will like them better than the Lands End ones I ordered and didn’t like.

Saturday 04/05/2025

In the morning I met with Alice supposedly to do a rehearsal of her book talk this coming Monday. However, the damned Zoomroom system in the auditorium was doing something weird so we go nothing done.

I idled around mostly reading and napping the rest of the day, except I took a tech squad call to help Lois after supper. She was trying to get into her husband’s laptop — he is disabled and in assisted living now — because she needed to use his gmail account to finish their taxes. There was some confusion about passwords and accounts, but we managed to get it straightened out and I left her signing in to the tax accountant site.

Friday 04/04/2025

Walked the standard walk in reverse so as to end up at Mme. Collette’s coffee shop as a treat. Finishing the walk I was thinking how Joanne was coming back from her Sicily tour tonight, and how her custom is, every Friday morning, to pick up a bran muffin from a certain bakery. So not wanting to walk an extra mile, I hopped in the car and drove to the bakery, got the particular bran muffin. Then since I was out, I drove down to FOPAL and got caught up on computer books. Back to CH I put the muffin in its bag on the railing by the door of her apartment, so she’d find it when she came in this evening.

Rest of the day was mostly reading. I’m reading Bill Gates’ autobiography and finally got to the interesting part, when at age 13 he and Paul Allen are let loose on a teletype terminal connected to a mainframe and he starts teaching himself programming. He was writing, or at least trying to write, quite elaborate games, like his own version of the classic Lunar Lander, in BASIC. (At about the same age, and about the same time, Steve Wozniak was teaching himself computer design by reading schematics.)

Thursday 04/03/2025

Out at 9am to drive across town to the Stanford Medicine imaging lab over by California ave, for a “CT with contrast”. This would be the fifth? sixth? scan since my dissected aorta was repaired back in 2020. The CT scanner is a big white donut; not the coffin-shaped box of an MRI. They put an IV in my arm and tell me, here comes the contrast fluid now, and a few seconds later I get a warm flush from my genitals up to my neck and a metallic taste at the back of my mouth, and the sled I’m lying on dives into the donut hole and back out. That’s it, put your clothes back on, see you next year.

Then off to Stanford Hospital where the cardiac medicine clinic is. I was seen by a surgical nurse. (I haven’t seen my surgeon, Dr. Amelia Watkins, since 2021 but I’m still her patient.) Anyway the nurse said the repaired aorta looks the same as last year, just fine, no change. Which is good news.

At 4 I met with Patty and Bert to talk about the 11th floor TV lounge. We are supposed to be proposing changes for the CAAG and we had to work out how to proceed.

Then down to the auditorium to set up for the Keller Sisters show. I thought I had the problem of a stage monitor worked out. The monitor sounded fine to me; when I sang into their mics I could hear myself just fine. But when Sheryl and Kerry and their guitarist Terry arrived about 7 and they tried stuff out, they complained they couldn’t hear themselves. I don’t know. We fiddled with mic levels, got something that was acceptable to them, although they kept complaining. They put on a good show and everybody in the audience of about 60 people were smiling and having a good time. But Jerry and I have to work on that setup. I just don’t know.

Wednesday 04/02/2025

Since Sunday I’ve been having a burst of gout in my left big toe. Just the same I went for a walk this morning. I cut it a bit shorter than usual, but still, 2.9 miles for the day. Returning, I realized that the concert I promoted, with the Keller Sisters, is tomorrow night, and I should go around and put ads for it on all the floor bulletin boards and in the elevators. So in half an hour I made found a photo, made up a one-page flyer, and posted it on 9 floors and four elevators.

At 11 I met by arrangement with Patty. She wanted to look at the different kinds of chairs there were in each of the floor lounges, trying to figure out the right kind of chair to use when making over the 11th floor TV lounge. We walked down floor by floor and tried a lot of chairs. One attractive one was light enough I flipped it over and saw it came from West Elm. So later I went on the West Elm website and looked at their chairs. Which are rawther expensive. I mean, $900 for a chair is typical.

At 2pm I met by arrangement with Sandy. She has a security video showing, well kind of showing, the moment when another car damaged her car in our parking lot. To file an insurance claim she has to submit still images so she wanted to get still images from the video. I had checked it out in advance; it’s really quite easy. So I showed her that.

Had supper with Jerry and Betty and Patty. Heard about J&B’s recent trip around New Mexico. And of course Patty has to say, “So Dave, when are you going to travel somewhere?” Good question. Nothing planned and stop asking.

Tuesday 01/04/2025

Not much of a day. Writers meeting, I had nothing to read. Peter read a great account of a memorable meal, in Hungary 75 years ago. I went up the 11th floor and tried out the DVD player there, which I was pretty sure didn’t work, and it didn’t, and I reported on that by email. Later I wrote an email to the common areas group about the 11th floor setup. Which proved a bit premature and offended Patty so I had some diplomacy to do. Later I had tea with Dr. Margaret. She wanted to talk about Bill Gates’s autobiography. She is one of those people who just does not understand computers at all, and cannot fathom what he is talking about when he talks about writing code. I tried to help but didn’t make much headway.

Monday 03/31/2025

Took the standard walk, in light rain; all fine. Then I completed my tax paperwork. I authorized the preparer to e-file; the e-file was confirmed later in the day. And I paid my 2024 Federal and State taxes and my first estimated 2025 payment for both of them, all electronically. As I had been warned, large realized capital gains this year meant quite sizeable payments. But the Nest Egg accounts can stand it.

Then off to FOPAL. Processed 7 boxes but not a high-quality donation; a lot of “how computers work” and “computer management” books from the 1970s and 1980s, not saleable at all. Four and a half of the seven boxes culled for the bargain room.

Back home for a nap, then it was time for the monthly Common Areas Advisory Group, or CAAG. This is a large panel of residents advising the staff on how to improve common areas. Staff, i.e. Rhonda, has a lot of ideas and is willing to spend real money. Discussed today, among many topics, was a new fitness center, formed by combining the present Activity room with two adjacent spaces to make a 1200 square foot space for exercise classes. Actual architectural drawings exist and this is going to be started soon. But we talked about other spaces, notably the 11th floor. I got tagged with an action item, when it was discussed how the TV lounge there, while it needs improvement, could be used for small movie watching parties, and I said “but the DVD player doesn’t work” and now I have to figure out what to do about that.

So after supper I went up there and found, one, that the remote for the DVD player has disappeared. Who the fuck would take away the Sony remote for the Sony DVD player which is of no use whatsoever anywhere else?